MOSCOW, September 21. /TASS/. The Schengen zone countries lack a common policy in what concerns harbouring refugees, Russia’s Permanent Representative at the European Union Vladimir Chizhov said on Monday.

"As of now, countries of the Schengen zone lack a common policy in what concerns granting shelter to refugees. Each country has its own priorities," he said in an interview with the Rossiya-24 television channel.

He said the Dublin Convention was effective no longer. "The Convention said that a refugee or a migrant reaching the European Union could be returned to the country of his or her first entry," the Russian diplomat noted. "If we now have a look at the main stream consisting mainly of Syrians, who are moving via the Balkans, we will see that these people reach a Greek island from somewhere in the Turkish coast by a rubber boat or something else and thus enter the Schengen zone, after that they cross the border with Macedonia or Bulgaria and leave the Schengen zone and reenter it at the Hungarian border where they encounter barbed wire of NATO’s brand design, police batons and so on.".